Crossbill.LicenseNoticeAggregator utility for aggregating third-party license notices in a single file
Crossbill.LicenseNoticeAggregator is the utility application which generates a single file with all license notices from the third-party NuGet packages referenced by a .NET project file.
The utility processes the .csproj file. It automatically takes the referenced NuGet package file from a local NuGet packages cache folder or attempts to download a package file. Once the file is obtained the utility tries to get the third-party licensing information from the NuGet package file. If the utility fails to find the license information, the notification is written to the log file licenses.log. All failed license notices can be obtained manually and put in the ManualCheck/ directory. So, next run, such licensing information will be included in the result file.
The result is a single text file with all third party license notices listed in it. The file can later be included together with the release version of the application.
The compiled version of the utility can be obtained from the release section of this repository.
The utility can be run from the command line interface as follows:
c:\Crossbill.LicenseNoticeAggregator\Crossbill.LicenseNoticeAggregator.exe /project "d:/Projects/Crossbill.Plugins/Crossbill.Central.Agent.Plugins.Cloudflare/Crossbill.Central.Agent.Plugins.Cloudflare.csproj" /output "d:/Projects/Crossbill.Plugins/Crossbill.Central.Agent.Plugins.Cloudflare/plugins/Crossbill.Central.Agent.Plugins.Cloudflare/third-party-notices.txt" /exclude "c:\Crossbill.LicenseNoticeAggregator\Crossbill.Central.Agent" /extra "c:\Crossbill.LicenseNoticeAggregator\extra"
The utility can be run during the project compilation using the following configuration:
<Target Name="PreBuild" BeforeTargets="PreBuildEvent" Condition="'$(Configuration)' == 'Release'">
<Exec Command="c:\Crossbill.LicenseNoticeAggregator\Crossbill.LicenseNoticeAggregator.exe /project "$(ProjectPath)" /output "$(ProjectDir)plugins\$(ProjectName)\third-party-notices.txt" /exclude "c:\Crossbill.LicenseNoticeAggregator\Crossbill.Central.Agent"" />
</Target>
- /project - the full path to .csproj file to gather the third-party references;
- /output - the full path to the produced text file with the license notices;
- /exclude - optionally, the full path to the directory which contains already processed third-party notices. The parameter is used if we package the submodule as a part of a bigger application, which already includes some third-party licensing notices.
- /extra - optionally, the full path to the directory which contains the third-party notices that should be included in the result file anyway.
The following directories under the application home directory will be processed automatically:
- ManualCheck/ - can contain license notices produced manually. The directory used for the NuGet packages which fails to be processed automatically. Such packages may miss the license notice or use nonstandard naming for the license file.
- ExtraLicenses/ - used when no /extra parameter is specified for the third-party notices which should be included in the result file anyway.
The sample result of the Crossbill.LicenseNoticeAggregator work can be found in third-party-notices.txt file.
The Crossbill Software License Agreement is located in LICENSE.txt file.
The Third Party Code in Crossbill Products notice is located in third-party-code.txt file.
The copyright and license texts for the third party code can be found in third-party-notices.txt file.